Selling the marginalized

IF you’ve been out in Burgos, you’ve seen the signs and perhaps, if you’ve entered Ringside Bar, you’ve been asked the question: “do you want to oil the midgets?” Ringside Bar features “lady boxing, midget boxing, midget oil wrestling, and midget dancing” in addition to regular, plain lady dancing. According to Kristina Wong, an activist and performance artist from LA, Manila is “known within the tourist circle for Midget Boxing and Midget Basketball because of the book Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew.” Yet to even those travelers who haven’t read the Fulbright scholar’s book on basketball mania and culture in the Philippines, “midget entertainment” often becomes associated with nightlife in Manila.

A friend of mine from England was visiting Manila for a work conference; he partners with NGOs here to help journalists and other investigative entities employ large-scale data in their work. Discussing political affairs and the persecution of journalists in this country by day, the sudden political incongruity surprised him when, by night, his local partners encouraged their visiting guests to drink with them at Ringside Bar. He asked me about this later, completely unable to wrap his mind around this feature of our nightlife. Meanwhile, I couldn’t believe that of all the things our nightlife boasts, this was one of our suggestions to foreign visitors, that this is part of our city’s landmark evening offerings. Similarly, Hobbit House in Ermita has become so popular that it opened a second location in Boracay.